Encounters of Sherlock Holmes

by George Mann

  “Something came through the window? On a moving train in broad daylight? Are you suggesting that something flew into the carriage?” I have always had the greatest respect for the intellect of Sherlock Holmes, but there have been times when I have found some of his theories more reasonably described as flights of fancy. This idea of a flying killer seemed to me to be one such theory.

  “No, Watson! It—or rather he—did not fly into the carriage, he climbed in! While the train was going through the long tunnel just after leaving the station, the murderer opened the door by reaching in through the window, and then swung himself inside. Perhaps Miss Williams saw him appear from nowhere and tried to keep him out by pushing the door closed, or perhaps there was a struggle in which the window remained open. Either way, in the moments immediately before her death, Miss Williams’ glove was dropped out of the train and ended up in the weeds and dirt at the side of the track.

  “I checked the carriage before returning home this evening, and I believe there is space on top for a man to have hidden and then carefully lowered himself down once the train was obscured from sight by the railway tunnel. There are footprints on the outside of the door, immediately below the window. Rather an oddity. One or two footprints as our killer swings himself down, gains his balance and reaches down to the door handle — that I can accept. But this is a collection of prints, one over the other, smudged and obscured, as though he hung there, braced against the door for some time. Which cannot be correct, for surely Miss Williams would have spotted him.”

  “Unless he was hidden in the next carriage along!” I interrupted with excitement. I explained to Holmes what Mr Clarendon had told me about being ejected from not one, but two carriages.

  My friend was instantly alive with exhilaration. Leaping from his chair, he cried, “We have him, Watson! We have him!” I have rarely seen Holmes so delighted, though I was unclear just how much it helped to know that the murderer had come from the side rather than the top of the train. “Or very nearly,” he amended in an undertone. “Knowing is not the same as proving.

  “But wait — I have something else to show you, Watson!” He brightened, pulling a second object from his pocket.

  The hypodermic syringe he carefully handed to me was damaged beyond any chance of future use, the needle snapped off and the plunger missing. I sniffed the end cautiously and was rewarded with an unpleasant though unfamiliar odour. “Have you tested this?” I asked, indicating the tiny amount of liquid still in the barrel.

  Holmes nodded. “I have,” he said, “and it is undoubtedly the poison aconite: a product, as you know, of a common garden plant and available still from chemists across the land.”

  I inhaled deeply in shock. Aconite poisoning was not a pleasant death, though it could be a quick one. The unfortunate victim would immediately have experienced numbness in her throat and difficulty in speaking, followed by a severe burning sensation there and along each of her limbs. Perversely, this burning sensation would have been accompanied by a heightened coldness in her extremities. A complete loss of control over her limbs would have ensued before her sight began to dull and her hearing fade away. Death could take place in less than five minutes (and leave no outward sign) if no help was available. And where was the poor woman to obtain help, locked as she was in a small railway carriage, with no exit and only her murderer for company? If I closed my eyes I could imagine him standing dispassionately over Miss Williams, lifting not so much as a hand in aid as she left this world in pain and terror and despair.

  Seldom have I felt so nauseated or so revolted by my fellow man. “Where did you get this, Holmes?” I asked.

  “After serendipitously discovering the missing glove, I continued on my original mission to speak to the labourers clearing the trackside. My intention had been to ask whether they had noticed anything as the train went past, but though they often wave, the speed of the train is such as to make any detailed observation impossible. They were, however, of far greater help with the second part of my mission. They had found a wild assortment of bits and pieces as they removed the undergrowth—old tins and discarded newspapers mainly, but here and there something more unusual. And amongst their most recent finds was the hypodermic you hold so gingerly in your hand. It could not have been lying in the weeds for long, for it had caught in the uppermost fronds of a clump of tall grasses and not yet fallen to the ground below. Once we find the man who threw this syringe from the train, the man in the next carriage along, then we shall have our killer.”

  He fell silent for a minute or two, staring into the fire. “How did your actor describe the man who so rudely lambasted him?” he finally said.

  “Muffled and hatted, in a long coat with a turned-up collar. Which could be anyone.”

  I was painfully aware of the poverty of this description and fully expected Holmes to dismiss it offhand, but instead he seized on it avidly. “Perhaps so, but this man has seen the killer close to and may remember more with some prompting. You have his card still?” I pulled the card from my pocket and handed it to Holmes, who glanced at it then reached for his coat. “In any case, it is too good a lead to ignore. Come, Watson, there is still time tonight to speak to Mr Clarendon!”

  * * *

  Clarendon’s room was exactly as I would have expected from our earlier brief meeting: unconventional, noisome and somewhat larger than life. It was dominated by an over-large though fine painting of one of the Christian martyrs displayed above an off-white plaster fireplace; the ascetic in the image was pierced with arrows and slumped forward from the tree to which he was tied. Open copies of the theatrical periodical, The Stage, were scattered on every available flat surface, alongside pencil-daubed scripts, pages of handwritten notes and, to Holmes’ amusement, a much-thumbed copy of Mr Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone. It was cold in the room but no fire was lit, nor did Clarendon make any move to light one, instead contenting himself with sweeping an armful of detritus from one chair and inviting my friend to sit. I forestalled any similar assault on the flooring by indicating I was happy to stand.

  I was surprised to see that Clarendon was grinning from ear to ear. Apparently unable to stand still, our host paced up and down before the cold fire saying nothing but smiling constantly, until Holmes broke the silence. He had barely uttered a word, however, when Clarendon burst into a more extreme version of the constant stream of chatter I had remarked on earlier that day.

  “May I stop you there, Mr Holmes, and make a few introductory remarks myself? Listen to me — Mr Holmes indeed! Mr Sherlock Holmes, detecting in my very home! Wait until I tell people about this! In any event, Mr Holmes, I must tell you that I take a great interest in you and your cases, and consider you the preeminent detective in London today, far outstripping the likes of Hewitt and that foreign chap Dupin.”

  With that he strode forward and extended a hand to Holmes, who, with a little trepidation, took it in his own and submitted himself to a hearty shake.

  “I thank you, Mr Clarendon,” he said, “though modesty forbids my agreement with your judgement. I will, however, agree with you that Miss Clarissa McCarthy does not have the gravitas required to play Cordelia, and extend my hope that your financial fortunes will soon return to their previous even keel. I am sure that you will be able to obtain a new role very soon.”

  For a second Clarendon’s face fell in almost clownish dismay, then the grin which had already threatened to split his face in two extended a further few inches as the man threw back his head in the loudest of laughter. “I hesitate to utter the cliché, Mr Holmes—” he managed between guffaws “—but how did you know all that?”

  For all his pretence of annoyance at being treated like a magician, I knew my friend appreciated being asked to explain his observations, and so was not at all surprised when Holmes, after waving a self-deprecating hand, answered Clarendon’s question in full.

  “It is not beyond reason, Mr Clarendon, to suggest that a man with no fire lit on a cold evening like thi
s is conserving his funds, although the rich brocade of your smoking jacket and the superior nature of the artwork on display hints that this is a temporary, or at least recent, condition. The fact that you have been drafting theatre reviews—” he gestured at the papers strewn around the room “—further supports the proposition that acting has not recently proven sufficiently remunerative. You mention Miss McCarthy in disparaging terms in the review topmost of the collection heaped on that occasional table, and I happen to have seen her play the title role in The Duchess of Malfi last month. She is, as you say, too jejune for the role. I surely need not elaborate on the circled job advertisements in the theatrical periodicals I can see all around?”

  He waved a hand again to forestall any deluge of praise from Clarendon and was at once business-like.

  “You told Dr Watson, I believe, that you were in rather a hurry that day?”

  “Yes,” the actor replied, “I was in danger of missing the train entirely so was more put out than usual to be rebuffed not once but twice.”

  “And you told the good Doctor that the gentleman in the second carriage was entirely muffled and hatted so that no part of his face could be seen?”

  “Exactly so, Mr Holmes.”

  “Was there any other thing you noticed about him, then, that might enable us to identify the man now?”

  Clarendon took his time to answer, spending more than a minute in complete silence, his eyes closed, reliving the scene in his mind. Finally, he opened his eyes and shook his head. “Nothing, Mr Holmes; I can think of nothing else. He was tall, but not unnaturally so, otherwise I might have considered that his reason for wishing the carriage to himself. He had his legs stretched out when I entered, but there was still plenty of room for me, had he not immediately started shouting abuse and waving those long fingers at me like some demented spider —”

  “Long fingers!” I exclaimed, as an image from earlier in the day came irresistibly to mind. But Holmes, as ever, was one step ahead.

  “Thank you, Mr Clarendon. I would say that little detail — combined with others I have already had laid before him — will prove enough to convince Lestrade to arrest George Fellows and his wife, the victim’s sister. I expect one will turn on the other quite soon after their arrest — the wife, if I am not mistaken. She believes herself to be more sinned against than sinning, after all.”

  Not for the first time, I stared at my companion in amazement. For his part, Holmes acted as though nothing exceptional had occurred. He merely shook Clarendon’s hand, and informed me as he headed for the door that he would be happy to explain — once we had given Lestrade the last piece of this particular jigsaw.

  * * *

  As it turned out, it was the following morning before Holmes and I sat down together. Over breakfast, Holmes was happy to explain those elements of his thinking to which I had not been privy the previous evening.

  “You must forgive me, my dear fellow,” he began as he held the newspaper out to me, displaying as it did the headline FAMILY MEMBERS ARRESTED IN RAILWAY MURDER! “I have been even more remiss than usual in sharing my thoughts with you regarding this case. In my defence I can only plead the fact that we have gone our separate ways more than is common over the past day or so.”

  Holmes’ smile was such that I could not help but feel that he was toying with me. “The key to this whole affair is a simple one. All along everyone has referred to the location of Miss Williams’ murder as a locked carriage. And of course, it is no such thing. The door to a railway carriage is closed tight, of course, but not locked, else there would be no way for passengers to leave in emergency — or indeed at their destinations.

  “Thus, even before I carried out my examination, I had concluded that the murderer must have climbed into Miss Williams’ carriage after the train had left the station. The carriage door handle merely required a sharp twist, and the killer would be inside. I had assumed that this would have been done in the open, given the darkness of the tunnel and the closeness of the iron railings to the side of the train, but when you mentioned that Mr Fellows had begun life as a sweep’s boy, and so was used to moving in tight, dark spaces, I began to suspect that tunnels offered the perfect cover, at both ends of the journey. Finding the missing glove as I did simply confirmed my suspicions. George Fellows moved from his carriage to the next while the train was concealed by the railway tunnel, and there killed his victim.”

  I must admit to a certain grudging, if fleeting, respect for Fellows at that point. The thought of clinging to the side of a train thundering along in the darkness, and with deadly iron spikes only inches away, filled me utter horror. Whatever else the man might be, he was clearly no coward. But Holmes had continued speaking.

  “Initially, I was sure that murder, not robbery, was the motive for this crime — and yet what killer would turn up his nose at a providential hundred pounds? Only one who had expectation of far greater remuneration to come, obviously. A woman who believed she would soon have no difficulty making her peace with her father and making her way back into his will. They would be united in grief, after all. Mrs Fellows would have little need for a mere hundred pounds then. Better that her husband leave the money and thus convince the police that nothing sinister could possibly have taken place. However, last night you raised an interesting alternative possibility.”

  My confusion was apparently obvious to my friend, for he sighed, “Mrs Fellows’ reluctance to spend any money, Watson! Fraser remembered that Mrs Fellows had discouraged Miss Williams from making any substantial purchases. I had been working on the assumption that murder had always been the intention and the money left in place to deflect suspicion, but now the very opposite notion gained substance. Why would so much care be taken about one hundred pounds before the murder, and so little afterwards?”

  I assumed the question was rhetorical, but Holmes apparently expected an answer. I shrugged helplessly and waved a butter knife at him to go on.

  “Two different aims, Watson! Mrs Fellows expected a robbery only, and wanted as much of the hundred pounds to remain intact as possible. Evidently, Mr Fellows disagreed, but I very much doubt that Mrs Fellows intended her sister to die, or knew that her husband had a syringe full of poison with him. I suspect the original intention was for a quick robbery—in and out in the first tunnel, where in the darkness Miss Williams would not recognise her assailant as her brother-in-law. But one hundred pounds was not enough for George Fellows—not when there was an inheritance to step into.”

  “Is that the entirety of your evidence, Holmes?” I asked, for though I could not fault his reasoning, I remembered my vision of the killer standing over his dying victim and was determined that he paid the full price for his crime.

  I think Holmes understood, for rather than bristling at my perceived lack of confidence, he was content to explain in further detail. “No, not at all, Watson, and you are quite correct to ask, for this was a clever and subtle crime. One, indeed, which we might never even have noticed had it not been for the wholly coincidental presence of the man Aberdeen. I fully believe that the Fellows would have escaped justice entirely had it not been for that, and one other unforeseen complication.

  “Mrs Fellows did not expect to bump into Bill Fraser, nor was she prepared for the fact that her sister would so quickly find common ground with the man and invite him to walk with them. The plan called for the two women to spend the day together, with no other close witnesses, so that Mrs Fellows could ensure that as little money as possible was spent, and then guide her sister to a solitary train compartment. But Fraser prevented that, and neither she nor her husband were cunning enough to extemporise, nor experienced in lying.

  “Mrs Fellows tried to shake Fraser off by feigning illness, but when it became clear that Miss Williams was happy to be escorted by him to the station, she made her excuses and, I suspect, rushed home in order to establish a rudimentary alibi. The original intention was presumably that Mrs Fellows would accompany her sister to the very doo
r of her compartment, ensuring no other passenger boarded before the train left. She would then tell her husband that the coast was clear—for how else could he be sure that there would be no witness? The chance meeting with Bill Fraser put paid to that plan, which is why the footprints on the train door were smudged. George Fellows, having no word from his wife, must have held himself against the door while he checked his sister-in-law was the only occupant, rather than swinging over and through in one movement.

  “As I say, I cannot prove one way or the other whether the initial intention was murder or simple robbery, but I believe I can say what actually transpired. Having committed his foul deed, George Fellows calmly returned to his own carriage while the train traversed the second tunnel—the one leading into the terminus—and was gone long before anyone noticed that the quiet young lady sitting in the adjacent carriage was dead.”

  There was a ghost of a smile on Holmes’ face, as he sipped his tea. “And of course I did send word to Lestrade yesterday evening to check on Fellows’ recent movements! You will not be surprised to learn both that his company is in severe financial difficulty—the sort that even one hundred pounds will not fix—and that he spent the morning loafing about near the station, before buying a ticket for the same train as Miss Williams. You may be more surprised to discover that Fellows was arrested wearing a set of cufflinks, engraved with the letters JH” beneath: obviously a present from Miss Williams to her fiancé, James Hogg. He says that his wife gave them to him; she says she has never seen them before. It will not be long before one or other of them attempts to come to some sort of deal with the police.”

  Holmes paused for a second in contemplation. “Which means that, in this minor matter at least, I was incorrect. Miss Williams remained constant in her affections to the end. That may be of some consolation to the family.”